The Rules Are
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: Let's play a game, says Jim, but Molly knows they're already playing, have been for weeks now. As he bends to kiss the hollow of her throat, her fingers curl around the rough wool of the jumper, and she thinks she's finally beginning to grasp the rules.


A/N: This follows "The Number Is" but works as a stand-alone one-shot.

* * *

**The Rules Are**

She spends all day in the shops, which is more exhausting than she would have expected; but the payoff, when it comes, is worth it. His eyes light up and his face becomes brilliant.

"Where," he says, "did you get _that_?"

She shrugs a narrow shoulder under the slightly too-big wool coat.

"What, this old thing?" she says, lazily, as though she just tossed it on. As though it had been waiting in the back of her closet. As though it meant nothing at all.

* * *

Jim washes his hands; Molly tucks herself up against the doorframe and watches him, half her body hidden. They look at each other in the mirror, long hard looks, sizing each other up. She wonders if he likes what he sees; he won't say a thing about it, just lets the view of her wash over him. His eyes are a bit glassy, as though there's far, far more going on inside his head than he lets on.

She can believe it.

"Hungry?" she says.

"You going out like that?"

She sends an involuntary glance downwards at her get-up, scrutinizing it. "It— may not be the most appropriate thing."

He rinses the soap from his fingers, turns off the tap, flicks water droplets into the sink, then turns to her. "Let's eat in."

His hands, finding the small of her back beneath the coat (and the thrice-wrapped grey muffler, ends still dangling, and the suit jacket, and the plain white button-down, and the loose white men's undershirt), are still slightly damp, and cool. They warm quickly.

* * *

Jim's not the lying-around-afterwards type. He slips off the edge of the bed to sit with his back against it, thin shoulders pale and freckled tucked up against the rumpled sheets, facing away from her, his hands drumming on his bare knees. Molly nudges at his shoulder with her toes, covering a yawn.

"I guessed right, didn't I?" she says.

"This isn't a game," says Jim, sounding almost irritated. But what he means is, this isn't _that_ game. This isn't _the_ game. This is a different one, with foreign rules, with seven-sided dice.

But Molly is complacent in what seems like a triumph.

"I guessed right," she says again, as though Jim is a riddle that she's managed to solve. "I know it."

Jim half-turns, puts his elbow up on the bed. Takes her foot into his hands and examines her ankle as though he's never seen such a thing before.

"I had a feeling it would work," Molly continues, so happy in her success that she can't quite remember to stop babbling, though Jim's fingers slipping round her instep and curling under her heel are distracting, to say the least. "Not that I set out to— not like this is a trap. Does it sound like a trap? But I just had a, call it a hunch." She stretches, and another yawn halfway turns into a giggle. "And I'm quite pleased with the result."

Jim grips the back of her calf with his thumb and forefinger, slides his hand down slowly along the back of her ankle.

"And it did take some effort," Molly carries on, a bit nervously now as his fingertips bite. "I mean, you wouldn't really think it to look at him, but he buys good quality. Not name brands, maybe. But still. And it wasn't as though I could wander into the men's department and ask them to dress me up like Sher—"

His hands are wide and full, both of them, fingers tight wound around her ankle, and he jerks her leg suddenly, tugging her down off the bed to land in his lap, awkwardly, haphazard, one knee bent over his shoulder. He pulls her up close.

"Hush," he suggests.

In the light from the window, the depth of his eyes is unfathomable.

* * *

He's strangely chatty the next morning as he plugs in her toaster.

"Hints and bits and pieces, Mols. Not that it isn't _fun_ to put puzzles together, but I'd rather you give me the whole picture and let me take it apart."

She sips her coffee. "Seems a bit backwards, doesn't it?"

Jim delivers to her a wolfish grin. "Something wrong with doing things backwards?"

She blushes— yes, she does, and the heat itself is embarrassing, and she wishes she could deny it, or hide it, but there's no hiding anything from Jim, it seems— and sets the cup down.

"I thought you already knew what there was to know about me," she says, neutrally.

"Pieces and pieces and pieces," Jim tells her, miming how small are the portions with fingers pinching the air. "String them together for me."

She takes a deep breath.

"You want my story," she says, "you have to promise me something."

He turns away from the counter, leans back against it, puts his hands back to grip the smooth granite. In his white undershirt, hair slightly mussed, he looks incongruously young. "I'll promise you everything," he says, smoothly, and she knows from the ease of it that promises mean nothing. He likes promising things more than he likes following through.

"Okay, look," she says, gearing herself up, tapping absently at the coffee mug. "You've already checked into my background."

"Inconsistent, to say the least." He folds his arms across his chest. "Good family, good school, good upbringing, bad hair. A large-ish blank spot in your record, around the university years. But the inconsistencies aren't what intrigues me most."

She swallows. "What does intrigue you most?"

"You," he says, coolly, and his eyes are fixed on her. "It isn't hard to guess that your name isn't really Hooper, Mols. I can find it myself, if I look a little longer. But you like to tell stories, don't you?"

"And you like to play games." She stares at the table for a moment, then glances up. "I'll give you a clue. A name."

He leans forward, expectant, waiting.

"Moran," she says. "And— that's all."

It's enough.

And he burns the toast.

* * *

Some time later, as he watches her do up the breakfast dishes, he says, out of the blue, "You know how to handle a gun, don't you, Mols?"

She stands very still, for a moment.

"I thought you said you didn't know the story," she says, voice low.

But Jim only claps his hands, and grins wildly.

"_Gotcha_," he says. "Oh, that's _beautiful_. That's amazing, Molly, it really is. You know, I have _always wanted_ to have a gunman with benefits."

* * *

It's Jim who picks the clothes up from where they've been discarded on the floor. He folds the under shirt, the neat black trousers; smooths the fabric of the button-down shirt; slips the jacket and the overcoat onto their respective hangers and wraps the muffler around the collar of the wool overcoat. He buttons them slowly, then hangs them up in her closet and gives them a long, slow stare.

Then he turns, and she pretends she wasn't watching.

Jim flexes his hands; looks at them; then goes to wash.

* * *

His peculiar sense of humor rises again a day or two later, when he shows up at her house without a word. She lets him in, and he hands her a brief bouquet, almost certainly lifted from its original owner without permission. He wanders into the living room, and she follows him, drawn by a sense of curiousity that always, always gets the better of her.

He shrugs his coat off and drops it over the arm of the flowered sofa, then turns and swings his arms wide, presenting himself for her inspection. He's wearing a jumper with black and white stripes, slightly too large for him. He looks absolutely ridiculous.

But his eyes shine with laughter when Molly is unable to stifle her giggles.

"Happy birthday."

"My birthday's in March."

"Pedants," says Jim, "miss out on all the fun."

He steps toward her.

"Let's play a game."

It's an opening line, a gambit. Molly knows they're already playing, have been for weeks now. As he bends to kiss the hollow of her throat, her fingers curl around the rough wool of the jumper, and she thinks she's finally beginning to grasp the rules.


End file.
